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Elastic Universe

I’m not very versed in the wonderful world of astrophysics. It is something I am avidly reading but I don’t expect it to ever be a topic I feel I’m an expert in. Tonight before I begin my vacation I wanted to leave you, whoever you are, with a few fleeting thoughts.

It appears that our universe is ever expanding, I may be mistaken but I believe this hypothesis was reached because we see the entire universe around us red shifting. This means the light waves between us and them are stretching, which can only currently be explained by a universe that is itself expanding.

I wonder if this isn’t a situation of the ball and paddle.

“Science?”

When you hit the ball against the paddle it accelerates away from the paddle. A few things slow it down first, air resistance mostly and then shortly thereafter the tension of the string. Up until this point the ball appears like it could continue onwards, and if we removed air resistance it could feasibly continue to accelerate.

The universe itself did not explode into existence filling up a previously empty void. It was an unimaginable mass that stretched from an unimaginably small point, at least that’s how I understand it. Taffy being torqued with incredible ferocity 14 billion years ago till present. We understand how explosions work, how mass expands and contracts.

But I wonder if that stretching action involves forces we do not yet understand. A force magnitudes stronger than that of the strong force, not that it would necessarily need to be so. The string that holds the entire universe together. As it accelerates outwards from the center of the universe the string is tensed and eventually it’ll hit its maximum and contract, bringing the ball back to the paddle.

That’s my guess at least. We are watching the beginning of the swing, the ball racing onwards towards seeming heat death. Yet I suspect if humanity managed to live long enough to immortalize itself it would find itself eventually hurtling back towards the core of existence.

A cyclical process that has happened again and again, for time infinite, expanding and contracting. Interstellar heartbeats that give and take life, when such opportunities arise. Perhaps science will find otherwise for certain, or perhaps it already has, but at this time I am still of the persuasion that time is a Mobius strip. Seemingly two sided, but indeed one.